It had happened so quickly he was unsure whether he had seen it or not. Whatever it was, it was not an elk. Stian keyed in the name of the chairman, but his fingers were trembling so much he made several mistakes before getting it right.
‘Yes?’
‘The emergency pole’s gone. I can’t turn the lift off.’
‘The fuse cupboard. .’
‘Locked and the key’s gone.’
He heard the chairman cursing under his breath. Then a sigh of resignation. ‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’
‘Bring a wrench or something.’
‘Wrench or something,’ the chairman repeated, making no attempt to conceal his contempt.
Stian had long known the chairman’s respect was measured in terms of your ranking in skiing championships. He put his mobile in his pocket. Stared out into the darkness. And it struck him that everyone could see him with the light on and he couldn’t see anyone. He got up, closed what was left of the door and switched off the light. Waited. The empty T-bars coming down from the slopes above his head seemed to accelerate as they swung round the end of the lift before starting the ascent again.
Stian blinked.
Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
He turned all the knobs on the console. And as the floodlights came on over the slope Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’ rang out from the loudspeakers and filled the valley. That’s the way, now it was a bit more homely.
He drummed his fingers and looked at the spindle again. There was a hole at the top. He got up, grabbed the string from beside the fuse cupboard, doubled it and threaded it through the hole. Wrapped it round the spindle once and pulled carefully. This could actually work. He pulled a little harder. The string was holding. Even harder. The spindle moved. He yanked it.
The sound of the lift machinery died with a long-drawn-out groan culminating in a squeal.
‘Take that, you motherfucker!’ Stian shouted.
He leaned over the phone to ring the chairman and inform him the job was done. Remembered the chairman would hardly approve of rap being played at full blast over the speakers at night and switched it off.
Listened to the phone ringing. That was all he could hear now; suddenly it was very quiet. Come on, answer! And then there it was again. The feeling. The feeling that someone was there. Someone was watching him.
Stian Barelli slowly raised his head.
And felt the chill spread from an area at the back of his head, as though he were turning to stone, as though it were Medusa’s face he was staring at. But it wasn’t hers. It was a man dressed in a long, black leather coat. He had a lunatic’s staring eyes and a vampire’s open mouth with blood dripping from both corners. And he seemed to be floating above the ground.
‘Yes? Hello? Stian? Are you there? Stian?’
But Stian didn’t answer. He had stood up, knocked the chair over, edged backwards and clung to the wall, tearing Miss December off the nail and sending her to the floor.
He had found the emergency stop pole. It was protruding from the mouth of the man attached to one of the T-bars.
‘Then he was sent round and round on the ski lift?’ Gunnar Hagen asked, angling his head and studying the body hanging in front of them. There was something wrong about the shape, like a wax figure melting and being stretched out towards the ground.
‘That’s what the young man told us,’ said Beate Lønn, stamping her feet on the snow and looking up the illuminated tramway where her white-clad colleague had almost merged with the snow.
‘Found anything?’ Hagen asked in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer.
‘Loads,’ Beate said. ‘The trail of blood carries on four hundred metres to the top of the lift and four hundred metres back again.’
‘I meant anything apart from the obvious.’
‘Footprints in the snow from the car park, down the short cut and straight here,’ Beate said. ‘The pattern matches the victim’s shoes.’
‘He came here in shoes?’
‘Yes. And he came alone. There were no prints other than his. There’s a red Golf in the car park. We’re checking now to find the owner.’
‘No signs of the perpetrator?’
‘What do you reckon, Bjørn?’ Beate asked, turning to Holm, who at that moment was walking towards them with a roll of police tape in his hand.
‘Not so far,’ he panted. ‘No other footprints. But loads of ski tracks, of course. No visible fingerprints, hair or fabric so far. Perhaps we’ll find some on the toothpick.’ Bjørn Holm nodded towards the pole sticking out of the dead man’s mouth. ‘Otherwise all we can do is hope Pathology might find something.’
Gunnar Hagen shivered in his coat. ‘You make it sound as if you already know you won’t find much.’
‘Well,’ Beate Lønn said, a ‘well’ Hagen recognised; it was the word Harry Hole used to introduce bad news. ‘There was no DNA. There weren’t any fingerprints to be found at the other crime scene either.’
Hagen wondered whether it was the temperature, the fact that he had come straight from his bed or what his Krimteknisk leader had said that made him shiver.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, steeling himself.
‘I mean I know who it is,’ Beate said.
‘I thought you said you didn’t find any ID on him.’
‘That’s correct. And it took me a while to recognise him.’
‘You? I thought you never forgot a face?’
‘The fusiform gyrus gets confused when both cheeks have been smashed in. But that’s Bertil Nilsen.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘That’s why I rang you. He’s. .’ Beate Lønn took a deep breath. Don’t say it, Hagen thought.
‘A policeman,’ Bjørn Holm said.
‘Worked at the police station in Nedre Eiker,’ Beate said. ‘We had a murder just before you came to Crime Squad. Nilsen contacted Kripos thinking the case bore similarities to a rape case he’d worked on in Krokstadelva, and offered to come to Oslo to give a hand.’
‘And?’
‘Dead duck. He came, but basically just delayed the proceedings. The man or men were never caught.’
Hagen nodded. ‘Where. .?’
‘Here,’ Beate said. ‘Raped in the ski-lift hut and carved up. Part of the body was found in the lake here, another a kilometre south and a third seven kilometres in the opposite direction, by Lake Aurtjern. That was the reason it was thought there was more than one person involved.’
‘And the date. .?’
‘. . is the same, to the day.’
‘How long. .?’
‘Nine years ago.’
A walkie-talkie crackled. Hagen watched Bjørn Holm lift it to his ear and speak softly. Put it back down. ‘The Golf in the car park is registered in the name of a Mira Nilsen. Same address as Bertil Nilsen. Must be his wife.’
Hagen released his breath with a groan, and it hung out of his mouth like a white flag. ‘I’ll have to report this to the Chief,’ he said. ‘Don’t mention the murdered girl for now.’
‘The press’ll find out.’
‘I know. But I’m going to advise the Chief to let the press speculate for the time being.’
‘Wise move,’ Beate said.
Hagen sent her a quick smile, as thanks for very much needed encouragement. Glanced up the mountainside to the car park and the march ahead of him. Looked up at the body. Shivered again. ‘Do you know who I think of when I see a tall, thin man like that?’
‘Yes,’ Beate Lønn said.
‘I wish he was here now.’
‘He wasn’t tall and thin,’ said Bjørn Holm.
The two others turned to him. ‘Harry wasn’t. .?’
‘I mean this guy,’ Holm said, nodding towards the body on the wire. ‘Nilsen. He got tall overnight. If you feel his body it’s like jelly. I’ve seen the same happen to people who’ve fallen a long way and crushed all the bones in their body. With the skeleton broken the body hasn’t got a frame, and the flesh says follow gravity until rigor mortis sets in. Funny, isn’t it?’
They regarded the body in silence. Until Hagen turned on his heel and left.